Tallahassee, Fla. — Today, Governor Ron DeSantis announced the Jacksonville area added 9,400 new private-sector jobs in the past year. The area’s unemployment rate was 2.8 percent in April, down 0.4 percentage point from one year ago.

The industry with the highest growth over the year in the Jacksonville area was leisure and hospitality with 3,000 new jobs.

In April, Jacksonville was among the top five metro areas in the state for online job demand with 27,674 openings, of those, 8,469 were for high-skill, high-wage STEM jobs.

Statewide, Florida businesses created 16,000 new private-sector jobs in April 2019. Florida’s annual private-sector job growth rate of 2.7 percent continues to exceed the nation’s rate of 2.0 percent. Florida’s unemployment rate of 3.4 percent represents a drop of 0.3 percentage point over the year. This is while 136,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 1.3 percent in the past year.

To view the April 2019 employment data, visit www.floridajobs.org/labor-market-information/labor-market-information-press-releases/monthly-press-releases.

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